1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the telecommunications field and, in particular, to a method for automatically selecting an appropriate physical communication interface for use in facilitating communications between at least two communication devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Many of the communication devices used in existing communication systems include a plurality of physical communication interfaces such as, for example, wire-bound (e.g., cable), wireless, radio (e.g., Bluetooth) and/or Infrared (e.g., IrDA) interfaces. Examples of such communication devices are mobile radiotelephones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and portable computers. As such, the term xe2x80x9ccommunication devicexe2x80x9d includes electronic equipment such as portable radio communication equipment. The term xe2x80x9cportable radio communication equipmentxe2x80x9d includes such equipment as mobile telephones, mobile radio terminals, communicators (e.g., electronic organizers), smart phones, and pagers.
As such, in order for any two of these devices to communicate with each other, the appropriate physical interface (s) has to be selected as a medium for facilitating the communications therebetween. In order to facilitate the selection of an appropriate physical interface, the existing systems typically display some type of menu with different selection settings. Consequently, a user can select a physical communication interface from the menu, which is to be used for communicating with another device.
A significant problem that needs to be resolved for existing and future communication systems is that as the number and type of physical communication interfaces available for use between devices continues to grow, users are finding it more difficult to determine beforehand whether communications are actually possible over the physical communication interfaces they prefer to use. In other words, although users may know that a menu setting can be used to select or switch between interfaces, the users are finding it more difficult to determine precisely what settings to use. Furthermore, once a user has chosen a particular physical communication interface (e.g., IrDA interface) for use in communicating with another device, all other available interfaces are disabled until a different menu setting is selected.
Similarly, by way of example, when data is being transferred over a particular type of interface (e.g., an IrDA interface) in most systems, other types of interfaces (e.g., wire-bound interfaces) are intentionally disabled. In fact, a wire-bound interface can even remain disabled after the data has been completely transferred. Consequently, for this example, in order for the device to be able to re-establish communications over the wire-bound interface, the interface must be manually activated (selected) by the user.
The majority of users are typically not interested in being required to manually select which communication interfaces to use. Instead, most users want to be able to select the device (s) with which they can communicate. For example, a user may want to synchronize Personal Information Manager (PIM) data between the user""s mobile phone and a portable computer. In any event, a significant problem with the existing communication systems in this regard is that they do not provide any method for automatically selecting the appropriate communication interface(s) to use. Nevertheless, as described in detail below, the present invention successfully resolves the above-described problem and other related problems.
In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a method and system are provided whereby one or more communication devices can automatically switch between physical communication interfaces on an as needed basis. A first device attempts to initiate communications with another device using one physical communication interface at a time. For this embodiment, these attempts are made in accordance with a predetermined priority list. Once the second device responds to any interface thus selected, a normal communication xe2x80x9cchannelxe2x80x9d is then set up between the devices via that interface. Albeit, once such a channel is set up for communications, a device can also use that channel to negotiate the use of another communication interface, if necessary. If the ongoing communications between two such devices are interrupted inadvertently, either device can attempt to reinitiate the communications in accordance with the priority list.
For secure operation: When two devices xe2x80x9cinitiatexe2x80x9d communications with each other, they exchange unique communication channel IDs. If contact is lost, the devices attempt to re-establish communications. During this process, the communication channels are requested to authenticate the other party. If the communications cannot be established, or if the communication channel IDs are not recognized by any of the parties, the attempt to re-establish communications may be aborted (possibly after a number of retries).
An important technical advantage of the present invention is that a user can be relieved of the cumbersome task of having to manually switch between physical communication interfaces.
Another important technical advantage of the present invention is that by providing a method for automatically selecting between physical communication interfaces, the usability of such devices having a plurality of physical communication interfaces to use is significantly improved.
It shall be emphasized that the terms xe2x80x9ccomprisesxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9ccomprisingxe2x80x9d as used in this specification are meant to specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, components or groups thereof.